Angus King

Angus Stanley King Jr. (31 March 1944-) was a member of the US Senate from Maine from 3 January 2013, succeeding Olympia Snowe; he previously served as Governor of Maine from 5 January 1995 to 8 January 2003, succeeding John McKernan and preceding John Baldacci. King left the Democratic Party in 1993 to become an independent politician, known for his radical centrism.

Biography
Angus King was born in Alexandria, Virginia in 1944, and he graduated from Dartmouth College in 1966 and from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1969. King became a lawyer in Brunswick, Maine, and he served as a legislative assistant to Senator William Hathaway during the 1970s. He also became a television host, and he founded his own energy management company in 1989. In 1993, he decided to run for Governor of Maine as an independent, seeking to succeed the term-limited Republican Party governor John McKernan. King defeated Republican nominee Susan Collins and Democratic nominee Joseph E. Brennan to become Governor, and he was re-elected in 1998. He sought to slash all regulations apart from environmental laws, hold the line on taxes, impose work and education requirements on welfare recipients, experiment with public school choice, and cut at least $60,000,000 from the state budget. King left office in 2003, and he returned to his businesses. In 2012, he was elected to the US Senate, again running as an independent. In the Senate, King supported the elimination of the filibuster, endorsed his Republican colleague Susan Collins' re-election in 2014, supported arming Syrian Opposition fighters during the Syrian Civil War, supported the normalization of relations with Cuba, supported action to combat climate change, opposed the Muslim ban, supported expanding background checks on gun buyers, supported Obamacare, and supported same-sex marriage.